Radioactive

Rosamund Pike adds another powerful portrait to her filmography in this drama that explores the life and legacy of the Nobel prize-winning scientist Marie Curie. Director Marjane Satrapi, the Iranian-French former graphic novelist who directed Persepolis, proves an enterprising choice. Expanding on the familiar template of the fusty period biopic, she takes a discursive approach that illustrates how Curie's discoveries in radiation impacted the world for good (cancer treatment) and ill (Hiroshima, Chernobyl). That makes for a somewhat unwieldy film with exposition-heavy dialogue, yet Pike's steely central turn holds it all together. She brings to life a person rather than an icon, excavating the layers in a fiercely contrary character who battles academic complacency, institutional sexism and the moral indignation of the French public. An ambitiously flawed yet uncommonly fascinating effort.